Yucky Medicine

What a drama we have had in trying to get out toddler to take a pretty awful smelling remedy for a fungal infection given to us by the local Naturopath.

I know that one of my earliest posts bragged about how much of a genius I was in devising a method for getting a baby to take medicine without physically forcing them. That was before.

Now she couldn’t give a hoot if she misses her favourite TV show as long as she doesn’t have to drink that foul crap.

It is amazing to see both how stubborn she can be (I wonder where that comes from?) and how quickly things can escalate when you know you can’t give in. At this age we definitely cannot afford to give her any victory in this matter or we will never be able to administer the medicine.

The first couple of times is always the worst. I think she says ‘no’ just to see what will happen. Our usual routine is two episodes of Peppa Pig and then a bath before bed. We told her that she had to drink it before we could watch Peppa Pig.

“No” she says.
“OK then, no Peppa Pig.”
“OK. Bath time!” Cheeky little turd. What were we going to do now?

Well we tried everything but she just would not take it and in the end we told her that if she didn’t take her medicine then we would have to go to the hospital and the doctors would make her take it.

A little bit dramatic I know but we really were at the end of our rope and things had escalated to the point of ridiculousness.

Still her lips remained tightly closed. Shit. This was starting to get really difficult. We looked at each other and silently decided that we would have to go through with the threat or we really would loose all credibility (like we had any in the first place) and have no chance of giving her the medicine in the future.

So we gathered our things and just as I put my hand on the front door knob to head out to the hospital she realised that we were serious and relented and swallowed the medicine without any further fuss. Phew!

After she had been put to bed we discussed the disastrous event in detail. I don’t really know what we were thinking. As if any hospital in their right mind would help us administer a medicine that a) They did not prescribe and b) We couldn’t even tell them what was in it!

Good work parents.

Rather than helping us give our child an un-prescribed, unlabelled concoction from a Naturopath they probably would have called the police instead and mum and dad would have spent the night in a jail cell and had a visit from DOCS the next day.

All I can say is that we are lucky she decided to take the medicine. We will be much more careful with our bargaining chips in the future…